District Prisons

Criminal justice in Manhattan at the most basic level was organized within the various districts into which the city was divided for administrative purposes.  The justices in each Police Court (later the Magistrates' Court) conducted the trials of persons accused of misdemeanors in the courthouse built for that purpose in each district.  Each courthouse could boast a district jail, typically adjacent to the courthouse, to hold prisoners awaiting trial.  The physical condition of the district prisons, never very good at the best of times, gradually deteriorated during the twentieth century and were successively discontinued as they fell into disrepair.  The Harlem Prison and the West Side Prison, the two remaining prisons at mid-century, were closed in 1949.

Second District:  Jefferson Market Prison, located at 10th Street and Sixth Avenue, in Greenwich Village.  The original prison, built in the 1830s, was demolished in 1875 and a seven-story brick building was constructed for the courthouse and the prison.  The new prison contained dormitories and cells to house seventy-eight male prisoners as well as sixty cells for female prisoners.

Third District: Essex Market Prison, 1st Street and Second Avenue, on the Lower East Side.  The cells in the Essex Market Prison were notorious for the abysmal conditions in which prisoners were held while awaiting trial.  A committee to investigate the prison in 1909 reported that the cells were uniformly dark, damp, and cramped and that the only source of light for the cells of the female prisoners, located underground,  came from a grating in the sidewalk.

Fourth District: Yorkville Prison, at 57th Street and Lexington Avenue, in the Upper East Side.  The Yorkville Prison, located in the basement of the courthouse, had cells for a maximum of forty prisoners. 

Fifth District: Harlem Prison, on 121st Street, between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue.  The Harlem Prison contained four tiers of cells, each tier having ten cells, the prison having a maximum capacity to hold eighty prisoners.

Seventh District: West Side Prison,  on 53rd Street, between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue.  The West Side Prison contained a large holding cage for prisoners and an additonal thirty-eight cells for male and female prisoners.